


the timelessness of existence

by Tupipsie



Series: broken timelines [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Minor Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Other, Photographs, Platonic Relationships, So is Yukhei, Xiaojun-centric, actually they're all time travelers, it really is all about xiaojun like i love him, kunhang and yangyang are amazing friends, sicheng is adorable, xiaojun is a time traveler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-26
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:08:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25520359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tupipsie/pseuds/Tupipsie
Summary: Xiaojun is a time traveler with no knowledge of his own existence. He doesn't know anything about himself but the photograph in his back pocket and his ability to walk on timelines.All he wants to know is how he got that photograph of himself and who took it.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun
Series: broken timelines [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1848853
Kudos: 10





	the timelessness of existence

**Author's Note:**

> heya ! this au was in progress in around march, but i finally got around to writing an entire fic ab it ! it's xiaojun centric and doesn't really focus on any ships in depth, so if you were looking for that i'm sorry !! hopefully i'll be able to write a ten x kun time travel fic in the future, but for now it's just xiaojun bc i love him dearly. this is practically my child bc i love this au so much, so pls enjoy ! ( btw, the photo that xiaojun has is a black and white photo from i think a photo book of wayv's ? he has on an oversized blazer and matching baggy dress pants that are held up by a belt, and his shirt is a peter pan collared white button up ! he's sitting on the floor with his legs stretched out and spread out to the side and he's slouching. hope that helps u guys get a better picture hehe pun intended !! )

The weather was blisteringly hot, heat waves forming in the air as the sun glared down on the greenery below. Orange trees littered the hilly land, streams littering the otherwise grassy wilderness. August truly was the hottest month of the year, the sky so fiercely blue it hurt to look at. 

A summer home stood at the side of the hill, built during the early 1900’s in France. Stone and brick constructed the house, with carved detailing at every turn. The windows had been replaced, a bronze trimming around each one. It was a two story house with a skylight in the foyer and a winding staircase that was made of marble. A library was placed on the side of the foyer, as well as an office space that was seldom used. Various paintings were hung around the house, seeming to date from every era the world had experienced. 

The kitchen itself was something to behold, spices and peppers hung drying from a rack as they neighbored a stand filled with plants and flowers. The fridge was rustic looking and the counters matched the marble staircase, pots littering the surface. The cabinets were made from cedar wood and had gorgeous carvings on them, and the cabinets that housed the plates and bowls had the same window panes with bronze detailing the rest of the house did. 

Cutlery was sterling silver and was always sparkling. How, the residents of the home didn’t know, but the house never really seemed to change that much at all in the first place. The wood flooring never seemed to scratch or fade, and the table never seemed to dent. A grand piano stood in the sitting room, it’s ivory keys rarely played but still perfectly preserved. Furthermore, the sofa and loveseat never seemed to become dusty or lumpy. 

It seemed as if it was frozen in time. To be fair, that’s exactly what it was, a summer home trapped in a bubble that never aged. Kunhang made sure of that, at the very least. France was so beautiful in the summer, his hometown somewhere he never had the heart to fully leave behind. While the house may be grounded in 1987, the rest of the world outside of it operated in a normal time flow, seasons changing and people growing old. 

Kunhang was a relatively sentimental man, usually taking the paintings that catch his eye in every time warp he visits out of fear it won’t recover when he leaves. Every time he looks at the paintings he takes, he’s reminded of his adventures, and he wouldn’t have that any other way. He was an attractive man of Macau decent, his features bright and kind. When he smiled it felt as if the room lit up, and his eyes were wide with eagerness. There was almost a princely aura around him, his black hair parted in the middle and framing his face. 

Two visitors of his currently took up residence in the house, his closest friends and confidants. Yangyang, who was of German decent, had a childlike face and scrunched his face every time he smiled or disliked something. His eyes were usually covered by his hair, and he was a lanky man who wore baggy clothes. 

Xiaojun was Kunhang’s other friend, his features bold and sharp yet delicate as they formed his face. He was an awkward, dorky person who seems to fold in on himself when he stood and had a chronic tendency to hunch his shoulders. He seemed meek but had a strong flare of personality that would often show with sassy remarks or biting quips when his friends would tease him. Rolling his eyes whenever he could, he mostly spend his time reading and eating oranges in the sunroom that looked over the vast mountains to the east. 

Xiaojun, in the simplest terms, was nothing short of an enigma. Unlike Kunhang and Yangyang, he wasn’t grounded to a time period. A timeline was drawn out for him, once, long ago, but has most likely been broken since. Due to that, he can’t remember his past life before he began walking on top of timelines and existences. Instead of existing in them, Xiaojun operated around them, dipping his feet in once and a while to solve broken time loops until he was forgotten again to roam the edges of timelines. 

He was grateful for his two friends Yangyang and Kunhang, for their presences grounded him in reality for a little bit. The only reason they could see the man was because all three of them were time travellers and operated in timelines they were needed in. Xiaojun’s job is to fix time warps, which are created by disastrous events with the intention of severing timelines. He must fix the timeline and dispel the time warp before the current events on the timeline are severely effected by the cutting of it. 

Severed timelines take a while to change current timelines, as the events have already happened and changing everything bends the reality disjointedly. It’s like rebooting a computer; it takes a while. Even so, Xiaojun must act as quickly as possible for the least amount of damage to occur. 

Usually all he has to do is retrace the perpetrators steps and fix everything they changed. He reports it to HR’s at the Center for Advanced Time Travellers, or CATT, and they try to find the person responsible. He rarely ever has to interact with rogue travellers. 

If timelines are too far gone, though, their past, present, and future too skewed from the original layout, Kunhang is called to sever the alternate timeline one and for all. There were time when both Yangyang and Xiaojun knew their friend hated his job, often sitting down with him as he cried over the loss of billions that existed in the timeline. They have to assure the sentimental man that, if he hadn’t done what he did, they would’ve suffered a much worse fate. Usually that helps. Sometimes it doesn’t, and the two leave their friend who steals paintings to brood by himself. 

Yangyang was on the board of Time Travelling Law, his busy schedule often causing him to leave for weeks at a time before returning to the summer home. He was the youngest member, recruited due to his parent’s involvement on the board and their generous contributions to CATT. He often offered a new perspective to people who didn’t have it. He was always stressed, causing him to drink a little too often and party a little too hard. 

The one thing Xiaojun did have besides his friends to keep him sane was a photograph taken of him in a timeline he doesn’t quite remember and by a person who shouldn’t have existed at all. It should be impossible to take his photograph because, for all intented purposes, Xiaojun shouldn’t exist at all. He didn’t even remember his birth name. 

Pictures of him had been taken before, but the photograph always showed up empty. He understood that, yet the photo of himself that he always kept in his pocket was the exception to a rule he held very close to his heart. 

To him, it was hope he couldn’t figure out who he was. Someday. 

In every timeline he visits, Xiaojun makes sure to ask the local photographers if they’ve ever seen the photograph Xiaojun held. He himself may not be able to be remembered, but he has an inkling that his photograph holds some semblance of reality. 

The head of his department, Kun, always told him it’s no use asking photographers in timelines because the person who took his photo was most likely a time traveller themselves. Kun always said it with a soft voice and a concerned expression, but that didn’t mean it didn’t irk Xiaojun any less. After every conversation with Kun, he always had to refrain from rolling his eyes. 

Yukhei always tended to never take sides when Xiaojun vented about his interactions with his boss and friend. Yukhei would always smile and say, “He’s just worried about you, Xiaojun. I’m sure you’ll find the person who took the photograph.” A smile followed his words, his big brown eyes always made Xiaojun shut up and drink his coffee. He grumbled every time, but never would he bring the subject up again in conversation with Yukhei. At least for that day. 

Yukhei was a giant baby, at least to Xiaojun. He knew so many languages they all got jumbled in his head, and the smaller man couldn’t help but laugh every time he messed up a sentence or when his Cantonese slipped into an English sentence. He had fluffy dark caramel hair and a tanned complexion, his handsome face a mix of both manly features and positively adorable ones. 

His giant ears and big eyes offset his plump lips and sculpted nose. He was 6’1, much taller than Xiaojun’s mere 5’7 stature, and the smaller man had so much respect for the giant. 

Yukhei dealt with tough cases of time warps, usually where a young child or teenagers have been wronged or hurt. He takes them to the Center of Rehabilitation where they can recover from the destruction they caused out of fear or the destruction that has been caused to them. 

Many young time travellers are found this way, but Yukhei’s mental state does take a toll. Many times the children have been abused or assaulted, but it helps when they make a full recovery. He then would fix the time warps and the children are enrolled in the School for Young Travellers. 

Xiaojun often did cases with Yukhei, mostly for the fact that the taller would track down the person who caused the issue while Xiaojun fixed the issue. They made a good team, even if Yukhei often wanted to stay longer and mingle. The man who hunched too much got annoyed by that sometimes, but knew it was something that couldn’t be helped. It didn’t hurt him any less when people didn’t recognise him or his sense of self began to falter slightly. 

Staying in a timeline that continues to move forwards for too long was damaging to Xiaojun’s psyche, his brain struggling to keep up with his own existentialism. Jealousy was somewhat of a close friend to him, as those around him could freely stay in any timeline for as long as they wanted without repercussions. 

Sicheng, a longtime friend of Xiaojun, often was a part of cases that spanned for months in the timeline he was occupying. Time was a bit of a relative construct and didn’t particularly have any substance to time travellers, often getting lost in days and years. Regardless, Sicheng’s area of operation was much more vast than that of Xiaojun. It was annoying when the older would look at the boy with the photo of himself with the most sympathetic expression ever. He hated when people pitied him and his situation. Pity didn’t help him at all. 

One of his most memorable experiences was when he met a good friend of Kun’s. Thin, almost feather light, a time warp gone rogue popped up on the radar and it was so very faint people thought it would simply solve itself. Sometimes a very powerful Traveler can leave a shadow behind when they warp. Nevertheless, Xiaojun knew he wasn’t busy and therefore decided to just investigate a little bit. If nothing else, he would come back as soon as possible and finish the paperwork he’d been neglecting. 

When he arrived, the town was definitely not created in recent years on the timeline. It was old, the streets made of dirt and loose gravel, horse drawn carriages being towed along them. People were dressed in vests, trousers, and shiny shoes along with long dresses that seemed much too heavy for the weather. Stores and businesses were open and accepting of anyone that was willing to buy, their eager faces adding to the salesman persona they held. 

The sky was rather dreary for how humid it was, the moon barely visible in the dingy sky. It smelled horrible, a toxic smoke smell that the inhabitants were used to. Xiaojun scrunched up his nose and resisted the urge to sneeze. Across the street a bar stood, its visitors laughing with liquid glee, cheeks tinted rose by the warmth in their chest. 

Shifting in the clothing he was forced to wear in the timeline to fit in, Xiaojun slipped his photo in his breast pocket and pushed his glasses up before going on his merry way. The brick sidewalks were wonky and misshapen, their construction being rushed and quite haphazard. 

Even so, Xiaojun avoided the ankle-breaking dips and the unnecessary rises by short jumps or long steps. Coughing, the particles that floated in the polluted air affecting him, he shook the grossness out of his hair before slipping into what looked to be a doll store. 

Clearly targeted for young girls, the dolls had pretty painted faces, their lips turned up and pink. Curly hair popped out of their lace bonnets, their dresses matching the color of the head accessory. Frilly and elegant, their clothing reflected the formal wear of the era and the delicate material the dolls were made out of caused Xiaojun to assume this was not a cheap store. 

Dragging his hand across a little stuffed dog that was meant to be a companion to the curly haired dolls, a wave of nausea hit him. The sinking feeling in his gut told him that there was no shadow warp here, but instead an actual problem. He wondered why it had taken so long for him to feel it, especially since the effect he was feeling now was mind numbingly painful. 

Stumbling a bit, careful not to bump into the shelves of delicate porcelain figures, Xiaojun shook himself out of his daze as best he could and located the direction the aftershock from the warp was coming from. 

It took him a while, the waves of anxiety rolling over him periodically as he searched for the source. Far outside the village, in a rather dinky cottage, was where Xiaojun suspected the aftershock to be. 

The second he opened the rickety, screeching door, he was bombarded with terror as he doubled over. Legs no longer supported his wiry frame, his hand clasped over his mouth to prevent any bile from rising. 

Thickly swallowing, the feeling subsided long enough for him to get a sense of his surroundings. 

Splintering wood and rusted nails were what built the frame of the house, a moldy smell emanating from the walls. Windows were yellow with age, their frames dusty and worn. The light that did filter in the house was stained an ugly mustard color, and the lighting did nothing to help the interior of the house. Dust covered everything, a grayish hue causing the house to look even more aged. 

A tea kettle sat on the oven, something Xiaojun doubted still worked, as well as a rusted over pan. The kettle had painted flowers on it, some of which had rubbed off with age, and the stout was corroded and unusable. Cabinet doors were barely hanging on by their hinges, some of the doors even half missing and jagged. 

Couches in the living area weren’t much better, the cushions packed with dust mites and bugs, the fabric torn and the very antithesis of soporific. Xiaojun steered very clear of that room, the dirtiness of it repelling him. 

Looking to his left, he saw the stairwell. It was moldy and broken, the steps being splintered and torn away from their original hold in the wood. As if knowing it would be impossible to climb up, it had somewhat caved in on itself to prevent anyone from venturing to the higher levels of the house. 

The lower levels, however, are what intrigued Xiaojun. He had yet to see the basement door, yet it seemed to greet him first as he took a few more hesitant steps in the house. Wood creaked to accommodate for the weight of a person, but Xiaojun could see a warm yellow light coming from the door to the basement. 

Wrapping around him, the artificial warmth from the light beckoned him further, creating a false sense of security he was lulled into. Opening the door, XIaojun made his decent down the stairs. They were silent, not creaking at all, a suspicious contrast to the squeaky state of the ground level floors. 

Gold decorum decorated the walls, the wood a much richer caramel brown than the grayish, aged wood the rest of the house had. Snakes were the first thing that registered in the time travelers mind, their scales painted gold as they framed mirrors on the wall or added accenting to the other objects that created a creepy elegance to the basement.   
Anything that had the ability to hold an object did, a coffee table that lined the wall had animals casted in gold, all of them possessing the head of a serpent. 

As the halcyon hue faded from Xiaojun’s vision, he was immediately aware of the live scaled creatures that slithered around on the floor, their bodies contracting as they moved. He looked up once he centered himself, fear dancing in his eyes, and made eye contact with someone who he was most unfamiliar with. 

The man sitting on a bed of delicate silks and velvet pillows had snakes wrapping his neck, arms, and waist. His eyes were painted red, a sharp flick sharpening the shape and giving him a more serpentine look. Two dots were placed under his eyes in the same stunning crimson. He was ethereal in every sense of the word, his aura exuberant and mischievous as if the man had been blessed by Loki himself. 

Too aware of the cold-blooded animals around him, Xiaojun didn’t dare take a step as the man painted in rouge opened an eye. They were strikingly yellow, a black slit separating him from anything human. He was no doubt a reptile in the body of a mortal. A twisted smile made its way onto his face, pushing up the red dots on his cheeks. 

“My, my. What do we have here?” The serpent spoke, his voice like molten gold, the tone he spoke in light and airy. Xiaojun swallowed, his eyes focussing on the black and white snake wrapping itself around the pale neck of its owner. 

“Are you—“ The human started, his voice faltering. Xiaojun nearly grimaced at his anxiousness yet stopped himself just in time. Showing fear wouldn’t help him right now. “Are you the man who created the time warp?” He asked, but his tone edged on that of a demand. 

Painted eyes moved into an expression of clear humor and a smile of condescension. “Why, haven’t you already figured that out? Of course it was me, but there’s no reason for you to be here. I’ll fix it once I’ve had my fun.” Golden turned brassy with whimsy as he spoke. Xiaojun scrunched up his nose at the change of tone, not liking where this conversation was falling. 

“If you fix it now, my supervisor won’t have to get involved. He’s a lot less lenient with things like this.” Confidence drained out of his voice as Xiaojun tried his best to be intimidating. Dealing with people was never in his job description. This was a job for Yukhei, or Sicheng. Not him.

Moving forwards, placing his hand under his chin as he leaned onto his elbow and knee, the other man raised an eyebrow in curiosity. “And who is this supervisor of yours?” 

“Qian Kun. He’s also a spokesperson for Time Travel Crimes, there’s no way you haven’t heard of him.” Xiaojun gained a little bit of self-reliance once he mentioned Kun’s name. He was someone no one could ignore, not even the snake in front of him. 

At the mention of his superiors name, the serpent raised both of his eyebrows as his eyes widened in something that Xiaojun could only pinpoint as shock. He then clapped his hands together an rose, letting the snakes that coiled his body drop harmlessly off of him. 

“Wonderful. Take me to him now, and I’ll close this entire mess up. Deal?” Xiaojun was shocked by his proposition, shifting back slightly, careful not to step on anything alive. Unsure of what to say, the subordinate to the man in question just shook his head. The perpetrator he was supposed to be catching just beamed, the mischievousness still more than present in his smile.

Kun did not take kindly to the man now known as Ten making his presence known to him. In fact, Xiaojun had gotten quite an earful from his boss because of it. Exasperated, all Xiaojun could muster from his vocal cords was an annoyed “I didn’t know!” that shut Kun up. Instead of yelling at his underling further, the man just grabbed Ten’s arm and dragged him into a sound proof room that had plastic blinds to block anyone’s interested eyes from peering in at their conversation. Kun despised snooping. 

That was how Xiaojun, and many of his coworkers and friends, met Kun’s little secret, Ten. They were enemies, but there was a tension between them that Ten was eager to act upon but Kun clearly resented. Not only did it frustrate the two of them, but it also affected everyone else because no one wanted to hear Ten’s constant doting any more than they wanted to see Kun yelling at him and then kissing him in secret later. 

Ten came and went as he pleased, straining Kun’s mental state. Whenever there would be a good point in their relationship, one of them would always ruin it. Xiaojun hated it, as did everyone else he knew. 

“I don’t understand why they don’t just… talk,” Yukhei said as he sat beside Xiaojun in the break room. It was a rather blank room, linoleum floors and clinically white walls that matched the equally fluorescent lights. There were a few white tables with accompanying white chairs, and vending machines as well as a coffee and tea machine. It was an environment that made travelers feel more normal, but it still felt incredibly artificial. 

Xiaojun shrugged as he nursed his cup of coffee. “Yeah, I know. But what can we do? Kun’s never gonna listen to us.” He replied, the two of them watching as the topics of conversation fought outside the break room. 

There were no blinds to hide how sad and broken they both looked as they yelled at each other, nor could anything hide how lovingly they looked at one another, even if they hated it. Yukhei sighed beside him, deciding there were much better things he could be doing than staring at the dueling couple. Pulling out the files he needed to complete, the giant got to work. 

Xiaojun on the other hand decided to distract himself with his photo. It had gotten more wrinkled since the last time he took it out of his pocket. The man besides him looked up at the photo from his mission description. “Have you gotten any leads?” The question was met with a head shake from the younger, who just frowned as he ran a thumb along the photo of himself. “You’ll get there, XIaojun. Even if you don’t, you still exist now and have a job you love. Do you really need that photo as confirmation of your existence?” 

Xiaojun looked up at his older friend, a sort of fondness and frustration created a myriad of emotions in his eyes. The elder got up from his seat taking his files with him as he exited the break room to finish his work. 

The younger sat with those words for a while in the clinical, almost tv recreation of a break room, his body feeling so small against the bright white walls and blinding light. Folding the photo as he ran a hand through his hair, Xiaojun felt a knot in his heart as his brain threatened to shatter. Was was there, keeping him here? Was it this photo or was it his drive to exist longer? 

Breathing heavily, a shaking rattle seizing his bones, he slid the photograph into his pocket. He was Xiaojun— he didn’t need a real name to make him any more of a person just like he didn’t need a photograph to prove his life in any timelines he paraded around in. He had people who knew he was flesh and bone, and that’s all that mattered. 

So as he sat in the brick summer home, a cold night breeze drifting in through the windows, blowing the sheer white curtains, Xiaojun thought. Kunhang had long gone to sleep, and YangYang was off taking care of some legal affair. In this moment, Xiaojun was more than alone in the house he had been coerced into visiting so long ago. He opened that black and white photo of his, one he couldn’t remember being taken, and looked at it for a moment.

To keep it was a crime against his very being. He wasn’t supposed to be tied down by anything, his clear existence outside of timelines a testament to that. He didn’t need to exist in a photograph, it meant nothing. Memories didn’t even help him recall why this photo meant so much. 

Obsession tugged at the crumpled edges of the photo, desperation in the creases that distorted the picture. Life wan’t depicted in the object Xiaojun held, instead life made itself known it the heartbeat that rattled Xiaojun’s ribcage and the air that expanded his lungs. 

By the glowing embers of the fire that had been lit on that cold summer night, the photo disintegrated into a distant hope that was as unreachable as the black and white of the photo. 

And one by one, everyone who he had called his friend made a home in his heart permanently. They were more important than his true identity ever was. Kunhang, the perfect man with a glowing smile and kind eyes. YangYang, the hyperactive man who never quite grew out of his childhood. 

Yukhei, the man who fumbled with his words out of eagerness and excitement, his shining eyes and welcoming smile. Sicheng, the delicately silent one who knew how to creepy his way under your skin in just the right way. 

Kun, who Xiaojun fiercely respected, a strong, proud man who had every quality of the perfect leader. And, lastly, Ten, who Xiaojun didn’t know he could enjoy the presence of, yet somehow he ended up enthralled with the sassy remarks and observed anxious demeanor. 

He knew them all better than he could ever know a picture.


End file.
